After in December 2012 the European Parliament approved the proposal for
a flawed unified patent court system that will put innovation at risk,
on 19 February 2013, the Ministers from 24 EU member States backed the
proposal by signing the agreement.

If officially ratified by at least 13 national parliaments (which must
include the UK, France and Germany), the system will be used for
resolving disputes on the validity and infringement of new unitary
patents.

Despite strong and long opposition and criticism from patent lawyers,
legal experts, SMEs and civil society groups , on 11 December 2012, the
European Parliament (EP), putting at risk any innovatory efforts,
adopted a flawed proposal of unitary EU patent and patent litigation
court system.

The EP approved, right after the Council of Ministers, a package
including a regulation for the creation of the unitary patent system, a
regulation for the setting up of a language regime for the patents and
an internatio

The Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) of the European Parliament is
preparing these days in view of the discussion on unitary patent on
17 and 18 September 2012. The issue of interest is whether these
discussions will bring back the return of software patents as it seems
to be the case, having in view the recent patent wars in the US (like
that of Apple against Samsung).

Based on a recommendation of the Committee on Legal Affairs, the European
Parliament approved on 15 February 2011 the use of the enhanced co-operation
procedure to create a unitary patent system in the EU, following the
request made by 12 Member States in December 2010.

Presently, there are national patents coexisting with a European patent in a
complicated and fragmented system which implies that the patent holders must
choose the countries where they want patent protection.

End Software Patents launched a wiki to document the case against software
patents. Over 100 articles are being written to give an idea of the scope
and structure of the wiki.http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Main_Page

A new international treaty United Patent Litigation System (UPLS) that may
create an centralised trusted patent court is the new open door for software
patents in the European Union.

The draft UPLS is inspired from the now defunct European Patent Litigation
Agreement (EPLA) and is estimated to creat a new international patent court.
As FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) points out, the
system will by-pass the national courts. This court system would be shielded
against any review by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).